Due to the extensive renovation of the University Museum of Bergen, the natural history collections on display will all be evacuated. The renovation process recently begun with the closing of the exhibitions on 1st of November and now time is limited for each room inside the museum to be emptied.

Hearing the builders on the other side of the wall, the first room to be emptied was “beinrommet” the bone room. All the different bones were displayed in glass- and wood- showcases. Although most bones were loose in the cases, some of the showcases were secured in the wall with screws and the objects either fixed to the backside or secured with small nails and a sticky material. One of them had to be taken down from the wall to enable taking the objects down safely.

Before moving any of the objects each showcase was photographed. Many of the most fragile bones were packed in polyethylene boxes to secure them for the move out and away from the museum. Others were packed in wrapping tissue and placed in polyethylene bags.

Wooden frames with craniums were displayed around the room near the high ceiling. Most of them were possible to recover by ladder but problems arose with the craniums of deer and elk. These were out of reach, with wall-mounted show-cases in the way, and also had heavy antlers. We managed to move the showcases and take the large craniums down in the end.

Comments Closed

Comments are closed. You will not be able to post a comment in this post.

Relocating the Past

The University Museum of Bergen was originally called Bergen Museum and founded in 1825. The museum has been housed in two buildings at the top of "Nygårdshøyden" since 1927 and the storage facilities are located all over town. In 2010 it was decided to rent a brand new central storage facility constructed after the museums demands. The new storage will have all the newest preventive measures to ensure that the collections are secure and well preserved for many years to come. This includes complete climate control, safety against water, and fire by introducing inert air. Inert air is the lowering of oxygen level from 21 to 16 percent.

The new storage facility is awaiting completion in October 2012 and the museum conservators now embark on the great task of moving all the collections from their current storage to the new one. Not a simple task when the collection include bisons, zebras, insects, chairs, farm equipment and altarpieces many meters tall. A great migration is about to begin…